“Platform workers across Europe urgently call upon you to support the political agreement”, said a coalition of European trade unions in a letter addressed to the governments of Estonia, France, Greece and Germany, published on Wednesday 6 March ahead of the meeting of EU employment and social affairs ministers on 11 March.
In a letter to the Prime Ministers of these countries, the European trade unions, including the CGT in France, DGB in Germany, EAKL in Estonia and GSEE in Greece, note that “at this moment, a common set of EU norms to end legal uncertainty of platform workers and to clarify the boundaries of the use of digital technologies in our labour markets is lacking”.
“Over the past years, national Courts have tried to fill the gap, but showed to be insufficient. EU legislation to protect platform workers is badly needed”.
Platform workers “are essential in our EU economy. Not only in transporting people, delivering meals, but also as internet moderators, data annotators, clickworkers, cleaners, temporary agency workers and beyond. However, all too often those essential service providers are exploited by the business model of false self-employment of platform companies. This abusive business model must be stopped”, they write.
The political agreement reached on 8 February between the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council and the European Parliament (see EUROPE 13352/1), rejected on 16 February by the Member States, “aims at establishing the correct employment status of platform workers: either as employees or as genuinely self-employed persons. And that is crucial to stop millions of workers being wrongly classified as false self-employed, which allows platform companies to avoid paying the minimum wage, holiday or sick pay, and social security contributions”, the letter adds.
In addition, it “is establishing transparency in the use of algorithmic management systems”.
Looking to Estonia
From the point of view of the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council, it seems that hopes are now mainly focused on the decision of Estonia, which rejected the text on 16 February, as the Estonian Parliament is due to take a decision on 8 March on this issue, the day after a debate within the government.
Home to the Bolt shared mobility platform, often described as ‘Europe’s Uber’, Estonia could swing the vote in favour of a qualified majority.
The Belgian Presidency of the EU Council will present the provisional agreement to the Member States again on Friday 8 March, in preparation for the ‘Employment and Social Affairs’ Council on 11 March.
With regard to Bolt, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) also wrote a letter to its representatives in Brussels on Wednesday 6 March.
“The Platform Work Directive is necessary because workers who did not feel like independent service providers enabled by the platform, won the absolute majority of reclassification cases brought to tribunals across Europe. Unfortunately, this has had little impact since the affected platforms refuse to change their business model”, writes the ETUC.
“Genuine self-employed would stay protected from unwanted subordination. Digital labour platforms that respect the rules would continue to compete on a level playing field”, the ETUC tries to reassure, ruling out any general and automatic reclassification of workers, let alone against their will.
Faced with an impasse, “the co-legislators have come up with a final proposal that can be seen as the lowest common denominator. The presumption is neither general nor automatic. We therefore cease to understand your continuous opposition to this latest version of the text”.
Links to letters: https://aeur.eu/f/b5v ; https://aeur.eu/f/b65 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)